


Wear your memory like a stain (can't erase or numb the pain)

by Elisexyz



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Season/Series 02, TAHITI Protocol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 15:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16328765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: Grant Ward is gone, she has wiped him out with her own hands.





	Wear your memory like a stain (can't erase or numb the pain)

**Author's Note:**

> For the Tumblr prompt: ["I’ll catch you if you fall, promise." + Biospecialist](http://heytheredeann.tumblr.com/post/179153605254/ill-catch-you-if-you-fall-promise). I wasn't really planning on things going in this direction, but alright LOL.

Jemma doesn’t do well with heights of any kind.

It wasn’t always like that: she remembers quite clearly climbing trees with no regard for safety when she was little, and even growing up she was never particularly afraid of falling, no more than the average person, at least. Then she had to skydive with no parachute and every intention of dying after that jump, and now she can barely stand walking down a ladder in a hole to the ground.

SHIELD’s situation at the moment is tricky at best, and Jemma quietly misses the days when they lived on a fixed base, or even on the Bus, instead of moving around every time there’s an high chance of their refuge being compromised. They are a far cry from a proper organization right now, they are closer to a bunch of organized criminals, enemies to the public and with a bigger, meaner secret organization on their tail as well.

Honestly, it’s unsurprising how many people have changed loyalties recently.

They are now headed to a bunker that – hopefully – only Fury knew the location of, before passing his wisdom on to Coulson. There are many entrances, so they decided to split up. Jemma got to dive into a hole with the company of Daisy, a lab technician that she’s barely ever spoken to, and Grant. Or rather, Isaac.

Because, as if their situation wasn’t tricky enough, they had to _adopt_ him. Because Hydra couldn’t leave him alone with his brand new memories, of course they couldn’t, they had to try and take him, which forced Coulson to take him in, because the idea of Grant regaining his original memories and working with Hydra to get revenge on them sounds much worse than keeping a close eye on him.

Or she supposes that to _Coulson_ it does, because Jemma isn’t seeing many highlights to this arrangement.

She’s the one who got to play with his brain. At the time, a part of her was even _enjoying_ the thought of getting rid of Grant Ward forever. Gone, cancelled. She got to wipe him out and substitute him with a good man, an ex special ops soldier – because they needed to justify all the scars, somehow – trying to live a quiet life.

She’s the one who got to withstand his burning glare as he quietly promised that they’d _pay_ , she’s the one who gets to live with her conscience reprimanding her for messing with a _person_ that way and her heart crying about _who_ that person was – her feelings occasionally coming back to the surface were all the more reason to be glad that Grant Ward was no more.

Except now she gets to live with this new Grant, a ghost of her own making, walking around with no idea of who he actually is, of who he was to them and what he _did_ to them.

Jemma hasn’t been sleeping all that well since she applied the TAHITI protocol to him. Even less so now that she has to live with the result every day.

“Jemma?” Grant calls – she tried to differentiate, in the beginning, to call him by his new name in her head, but it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort –, from under her. She asked to go last, in a foolish attempt at delaying the inevitable, so by now Daisy must already have reached the ground. How she envies her. “Everything okay?” Grant adds, and she realizes that she has stopped moving, her hands trembling slightly.

“Yeah,” she swallows, forcing herself to move another slow step down. She wants to _look_ , make sure that she’s putting her feet in the right place, but she knows that that will only blind her with terror. “Yes, I am just— a little bit weary of heights. That’s all.”

“I get that,” he says, lightly. “It’s normal. Just take one step at the time, alright?”

She takes a sharp breath, her heart racing in her chest as she takes yet another step. Her hands are sweating, which only makes her fear that she’ll lose her grip on the ladder.

“Hey, don’t worry. I’ll catch you if you fall, promise,” Grant adds, and Jemma’s stomach somehow sinks to her knees. She’s heard that before, and at the time it made butterflies magically appear in her stomach, her skin tingle where he touched it and her shoulders relax slightly, because she trusted him completely.

So much has changed since then, and they went from her fully believing that he would catch her like a knight in shining armour to him tossing her out of a plane.

And now they are back to a point where she actually has no reason to believe that he’s lying. Grant Ward is gone, she has wiped him out with her own hands.

Yet, for a second, it’s like _agent_ Ward was never gone at all, like she managed to wipe out all the bad and she was rewarded with the man that she loved, at least a little, once upon a time.

“Thank you, Isaac,” she says, stressing his name just a little, just to remind herself that they are not on the Bus and that that Grant never existed at all.

 

He helps her down the last few feet, making sure that she is fully supported even as she trembles and her knees feel like they are made of jelly. She accepts the help, thanking him with a polite smile – because this isn’t Grant, and she’s making it a point of not holding anything against _him;_ how could she, when a voice in her head won’t stop accusing her of having wronged him just as much as he did her, if not more?

“Let’s go, the others must be waiting,” Daisy orders, taking Jemma’s arm and leading her away from Grant, her tone a little sharp around the edges. It’s subtle enough that she isn’t sure Grant noticed the hostility directed at him.

If he did pick up on the fact that he’s not particularly well-liked, he never mentioned it.

“You okay?” Daisy asks, quietly, as they lead the way while Grant chats with the fourth member of their small team.

“Yes, now that I am on the ground,” Jemma smiles, and she’s actually beginning to feel less light-headed. She knows that that isn’t exactly what Daisy intended – she has noticed that Jemma tends to spend more time than the others around Grant, because she’s inclined to be much more polite than it’s expected of her; Daisy is a good friend, and she worries that she’s just too polite to send him off even if she hates having him around, which is close to the truth, except her reasoning for not pushing him away has a lot more to do with guilt than sainthood –, but she hopes that she’ll let it go.

Thankfully, she does.

 

 

One day, Coulson sends Jemma and Grant off to a safehouse. He was injured, and Hydra seems to be targeting her specifically, probably to work on some new project to further their world domination plans, so it was decided that they’d better stay off the radar for a while.

Coulson was considerate enough to ask if being alone with him for an unspecified amount of time would be a problem, but in the last couple of months Grant has shown no signs of remembering who he is, they have been getting along exceptionally well and she has nothing to object – except maybe that sometimes she feels so guilty she can barely breath, but that’s hardly grounds to mess up a perfectly good arrangement.

They are sent to a safehouse in the middle of nowhere, the location of which is known only to Coulson and where they can assume they’ll be as safe as two people on the run from both the government _and_ criminals can be.

The first thing she does upon arriving is changing Grant’s bandage – because one habit that he hasn’t lost in the transition from Ward to Isaac is downplaying his injuries, so she’d better keep an eye on it herself.

He’s sitting on a table, not making a sound, and by now Jemma has kind of gotten used to how familiar and yet _wrong_ it feels.

He thanks her as soon as she’s done, and she goes to take a shower. He follows her with his eyes as she goes, and she still feels the weight of his gaze when the door is safely locked behind her.

She appreciates the minutes of loneliness, even if being on the run has taught that she shouldn’t appreciate being cut off from the rest of the outside world by the sound of the water running. She makes it a quick shower, and she stands still for a moment after the water has stopped running, her ears ready to catch the sound of a struggle outside.

But there’s nothing, so she allows herself a relieved smile.

When she gets out, the house is creepily silent. The sun will go down soon, so there isn’t much light and everything she can see are creepy shadows all around. She quickly turns on the first light she can get her hands on, her eyes landing on Grant immediately afterwards: he’s standing by the couch, playing with his gun, apparently lost in thought.

“Isaac?” she calls, tentatively, her gut screaming that something is not right.

He clicks his tongue. “Not quite,” he comments, raising his eyes on her with an hint of amusement in his expression.

Jemma’s stomach sinks. “Grant?” she tries, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Bingo,” he grins, and as she steps forward she automatically starts backing down.

“You— how do you—”

“Remember?” he completes, his tone pleasant. Yet, Jemma can feel the threat underneath it, the promise of making her _pay_ hanging between them. “I’m not sure, you’re the scientist. Maybe taking me back wasn’t the best call. Maybe you didn’t brainwash me hard enough. Lacking motivation, sweetheart?”

At the challenge in his tone, Jemma somehow finds it in her to push down her horror and raise her chin. “We had no other choice,” she says, forcefully, repeating what she has been telling herself over and over. “You were a threat—”

“I kind of still am,” he comments, shrugging. “Guess your plan didn’t work out all that well.”

Jemma swallows. “How long?” she asks, her voice surprisingly firm.

“Couple of weeks,” he explains, his tone still perfectly pleasant. “I needed to work out a bit of a plan, you know? Reached out to my old buddies in Hydra—”

Of course he did. “So you got me here alone to what? Put a bullet in my head?” she challenges, and she isn’t really sure about where all that bravado is coming from.

“No, of course not,” he smiles broadly. “I just want an ally, that’s all.”

“You think I’ll be your ally?” she asks, sceptically.

“I think you won’t have a choice,” he simply says. Next thing Jemma knows, she’s being grabbed from behind and everything fades to black.

 

 

When she comes to, she’s hooked to what she recognizes as the Faustus device. To keep her company, there are Grant, Bakshi and a third man that she doesn’t recognize and that is probably there only as back-up, judging by how he’s watching the entrance like an hawk.

Jemma’s heartrate starts increasing, her breath fastening as panic threatens to overcome her.

“Welcome back, Doctor,” Bakshi announces, with a toothy smile, before going back to whatever it is that he’s doing. Grant is staring at her, his expression unreadable.

“Him? Really?” she rushes out, automatically trying to fight the restrains. “All that talk about—about Agent Palamas and loving her and all the wrongs that Hydra did to her and you just work with the very same people who ruined her life?”

That might have been a bad idea, because Grant’s expression instantly hardens. It takes a few moments for him to take a grip. “It’s not too different from accepting to work with SHIELD,” he says, drily. “And you haven’t left me much of a choice, have you?”

She scoffs. Of course it’s never his fault.

A part of Jemma is a little glad that he’s back: she has spent so much time reprimanding herself for erasing everything Grant was, that apparently she managed to forget _what_ exactly he was. What sort of monster they were dealing with. Neither agent Ward nor Isaac were ever real. The only thing that’s real is the man standing in front of her, about to get her brainwashed and still refusing to be held accountable for it. _That’s_ the real him.

“God forbid you take any responsibility,” she says, sarcastically.

Her hands are sweating, and she feels her muscles pushing back against the restraints, trying to get out even though she knows perfectly well it’s futile. Her eyes sting, but she doesn’t drop Grant’s gaze, because she can’t afford to. She knows that begging won’t help.

“Do _you_?” he shoots back. “Take any responsibility for what you did to _me_?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she hisses, without any need to think about it. “I did, every day. Even if I had a reason to do it.”

Grant just stares, and for a moment she sees something of the man she thought he was in his eyes, she dares hoping that he’ll change his mind, snap Bakshi’s neck and let her go. Whatever she saw, though, is soon gone.

“Call me when you are done,” he says, drily, turning towards Bakshi before heading out.

Jemma barely swallows the urge to call for him.


End file.
